Description

In this datapaper we describe the dataset of the Global Change, Altitudinal Range Shift and Colonization of Degraded Habitats in Mediterranean Mountains (MIGRAME) project, which aims to asses the capacity of altitudinal migration and colonization of marginal habitats by Quecurs pyreanica Willd. forests in Sierra Nevada (southern Spain) considering two global change drivers: temperature increase and land use changes. The dataset includes information of the forest structure (diameter size, tree height and abundance) of the Quercus pyrenaica ecosystem in Sierra Nevada obtaided from 199 transect sampled at the treeline ecotone, mature forest and marginal habitats (abandoned cropland and pine plantations). A total of 3839 occurence records were collected and 5751 measurement recorded. The dataset is included in the Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory (OBSNEV), a long-term research project designed to compile socio-ecological information on the major ecosystem types in order to identify the impacts of global change in this area.

Geographic Description

Sierra Nevada is a high-mountain range located in southern Spain (37ºN, 3ºW) with an altitudinal range between 860 m and 3482 m a.s.l.. The climate is Mediterranean, characterized by cold winters and hot summers, with pronounced summer drought (July-August). The Sierra Nevada mountain range hosts a high number of endemic plant species (c. 80) (Lorite et al. (2007)) for a total of 2,100 species of vascular plants (25% and 20% of Spanish and European flora respectively), and thus it is considered one of the most important biodiversity hotspots in the Mediterranean region (Blanca et al. (1998)). This mountain area comprises 27 habitat types from the habitat directive. It contains 31 animal species (20 birds, 5 mammals, 4 invertebrates, 2 amphibians and reptiles) and 20 plant species listed in the Annex I and II of habitat and bird directives. Sierra Nevada has several types of legal protections: Biosphere Reserve MAB Committee UNESCO; Special Protection Area and Site of Community Importance (Natura 2000 network); and National Park. There are 61 municipalities with more than 90,000 inhabitants. The main economic activities are agriculture, tourism, beekeeping, mining, and skiing (Bonet et al. (2010)).

Data quality

The transects coordinates were recorded with a handheld Garmin eTrex Vista Global Positioning System (GPS, +-5 m accuracy, Garmin (2007)) (ED1950 Datum). We also used colour digital orthophotographs provided by the Andalusian Cartography Institute and GIS (ArcGIS 9.2; ESRI, Redlands, California, USA) to verify that the geographical coordinates of each sampling plot were correct (Chapman and Wieczorek 2006).

The specimens were taxonomically identified using Flora Iberica (Castroviejo et al. 1986-2005, Castroviejo 2001). The scientific names were checked with databases of International Plant Names Index (IPNI 2013) and Catalogue of Life/Species 2000 (Roskov et al. 2013). We also used the R packages taxize (Chamberlian and Szocs 2013, Chamberlain et al. 2014) and Taxostand (Cayuela and Oksanen 2014) to verify the taxonomical classification.

Methods

All data were stored in a normalized database and incorporated into the Information System of Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory http://obsnev.es/linaria.html – Pérez-Pérez et al. 2012; Free access upon registration). Taxonomic and spatial validations were made on this database (see Quality-control description). A custom-made SQL view of the database was performed to gather occurrence data and other variables associated with some occurrence data (diameter size and tree height of each individual).

The occurrence and measurement data were accommodated to fulfil the Darwin Core Standard (Wieczorek et al. 2009, 2012). We used Darwin Core Archive Validator tool http://tools.gbif.org/dwca-validator/) to check whether the dataset meets Darwin Core specifications. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT v2.0.5) (Robertson et al. 2014) of the Spanish node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) http://www.gbif.es:8080/ipt) was used both to upload the Darwin Core Archive and to fill out the metadata.

Rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License.

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